Barton and Romanoff caught up with him before he got to the infirmary and fell in behind him silently. For that, he was grateful. He didn't want to talk right now. The infirmary was more of a mess than Banner or O'Malley would ever have tolerated normally. Stark was sitting on a stool at Bucky's left shoulder, a screwdriver in one hand, a few bits of shoulder-shaped metal at his feet and a look of fierce concentration on his face. Banner was next to him, looking between Bucky's head, Stark, and the monitor Bucky was hooked up to. Bucky was motionless, a tube sticking out of his mouth, rigged to the machine next to Banner. He'd been changed out of his combat gear, which was lying in a bloody heap in the corner, and into a hospital gown. He'd hate that when he woke up. Or he would if he had the faintest idea who he was. O'Malley was standing by Bucky's right leg, stitching up a bleeding hole. There were several sets of stitches on that leg, and more on the other, and one on his flesh arm.
"How nearly there do you think you are?" Banner was asking Stark as Steve came in hearing range of the door.
"I'm making this up as I go. You said there should be three main wires, we're two down."
"You should only have the musculocutaneous left." O'Malley said, not looking up. "Should be deep and medial, just over the bone."
"Yeah, there isn't a central bone in this really. It's seven bars and twin hydraulics between them. They built this in what? 1950? This would be ahead of its time now, it's beautiful." It wasn't beautiful. It was a thing that had been stuck on his best friend as part of making him into a killing machine.
Steve opened the door. "How is he?"
"Stable." Banner said. "More or less."
"He's been in the wars." O'Malley said. "I've pulled all that out of him," She nodded to a dish with a dozen bullets and bits of shrapnel in it. "and I'm not finished yet. Going by how inflamed some of them are, they're days old. He was sort of healing round them, they'll be very sore." Even drugged out, Bucky looked a mess. His skin was dark with dirt in places, there were dark circles under his eyes, he was pale, he was thin and there were strange lumps on him that hadn't been obvious through combat gear, some of them had stitches in. And he was covered in blood. All that said, it wasn't the worst Steve had seen him look.
"He's just really unwell." Banner said. "He probably hasn't eaten in ages, he's dehydrated enough that it matters, which is why we've got the drip."
"That and hypoglycaemia." O'Malley added.
Banner nodded. "I remember you saying weeks ago that was something we had to watch him for."
"Yeah, when they crash, they crash fast." She cut the ends off her knot and picked up something that looked electric and held it over Bucky. It crackled. "Still more in there."
"Shotgun?" Banner asked.
"Probably." She looked up at everyone else. "He's got a load of little bullets in and around this hip, my guess is a shotgun at medium range, days back given how inflamed it is."
"And he stayed on his feet." Barton said.
"Apparently." Barton shook his head incredulously. "We had a bit of fun getting him at a stable plane."
"He's almost immune to everything except the gas." Banner said.
"Will he survive?" Steve asked. They'd got very far off the point.
"Well, there's always a bit of risk waking anybody up from anaesthetic, but he's very low risk. We're just going to have to watch his blood sugar. He should wake up."
"Probably alarmingly quickly." Banner said.
"Hand." Stark said shortly.
"Where?" Banner asked.
"This one." Stark twitched his right hand, Banner slid his hand in to the gap beside it. Stark pulled his hand away and grabbed something else. He pulled the metal arm away from Bucky's shoulder, hard. It slid two inches, then stopped. Stark hissed a curse. "No, still joined on. This thing goes a long way back in to him."
"It would have to." Romanoff said. "If you just add a powerful arm, it'll pull his shoulder apart. It needs anchors as strong as it is." Steve felt goosebumps rise on his arms. There was a long silence.
"Bruce," O'Malley started eventually, "have you looked at the inside of these lumps?"
"Not much."
"They're like massive granulomas."
"Maybe that's what they are. He leaves the bullets in, his body copes as best it can."
"Neither of the others does that."
"Maybe they would if we left a non-sterile thing in them long enough."
"Nat's pretty meticulous about cleaning her wounds." Barton put in.
Romanoff shrugged. "They heal better. Black Widows were meant to be dropped and left to it for years at a time, he was never meant to survive on his own." Except when he'd been Bucky Barnes. That man had been independent, adaptive, just generally good at being. What had they had to do to him to make him forget that you shouldn't leave bullets in?
"Seems like a pretty dumb idea." Barton replied. "Create an assassin that can't take care of himself."
"Not so much." Romanoff flatly. Steve frowned at her. She shifted. "You and I were willing agents. We were made strong by people who knew we would go to the ends of the earth for our cause, because we believed it. So for us to be independent is smart. If we run off, we probably had a good reason to and we would always come back, eventually."
"Yeah, that worked." Barton said sarcastically.
Romanoff carried on regardless. "HYDRA made him the way he is, I don't think for a moment they ever trusted him. They were always afraid he'd break out, go AWOL, so they made him dependant on them. He couldn't get the bullets out of himself, I bet he can't maintain his arm." Steve looked calculatingly at Romanoff. She knew more than she was saying. There was a soft clunk.
"Bingo." Stark called, pulling the metal arm away. There was quite a significant stump of metal left on Bucky's upper arm, the flesh didn't seem to start until past where his arm was attached to him. "I'm taking this downstairs. He's all yours."
"Hey." Steve caught Stark's shoulder. "That's his arm. Until you know otherwise, it's his and he needs it back. No modifications." Stark sighed.
"Gotcha. But for the record, you have no idea what this technology could do for prosthetics. It is way ahead of its time."
"It's his arm." Stark left.
Steve looked back at Romanoff, who didn't look back at him. She hadn't just guessed that, or the bit before about keeping him dependant. He'd chase her up on it later. He didn't have it in him right now. O'Malley carried on pulling little bits of metal out of Bucky for quite a while, speaking incomprehensible medical jargon to Banner.
"How are we going to do analgesia?"
"Yeah, the hepatic thing is a problem. We don't know how easy it will be to get drugs in to him once he wakes up either."
"We've tried for pre-emptive, I'm inclined just to hit him really hard with morphine now."
"What about the missing arm?"
"You think that'll hurt him?"
"We don't know that it won't. It might feel like an amputation."
"It's not like we've been sawing bone."
"Even so…"
"OK. He's likely to wake up disorient and scared, isn't he?"
"Yeah. Let's not add pain to that if we can avoid it."
"Nerve blocking under that's going to be fun. Grab me a spinal needle."
"Should we even bother with NSAIDs?"
"Given his hydration status, it might not be a great idea. That said, I don't think he'd be easy to over-med."
"What do you figure they had the prisoners for?" Barton asked.
Banner looked questioningly at Barton.
"They had seven prisoners down there." Romanoff answered. "All dead." O'Malley closed her eyes for a second, Banner looked away. "And not necessarily. They might have prisoners for reasons other than experimentation."
"No they don't." Steve said. "If HYDRA aren't going to experiment on you, they just kill you."
"But if you're handling killers, they need something to practice on. They knew he was coming," She nodded at Bucky. "Instead of running, they set a trap for him. They thought they' get him back under control, they think he'll need bait when he does, so they pick up a few bums nobody'll pay much attention to." Everyone looked at her. She shrugged. "Red room used to pick up bait that way; vagrants, prisoners…people nobody would look for."
"Bait." Steve said shortly.
Romanoff looked away. "НАЖИВКА. That's what they called them for us. I think bait is a better translation than lure in that context."
"Right, I think we're done. Now get the heck out of here." Steve had been about to protest that he wasn't going anywhere, but when he looked up, O'Malley was talking to Banner, who got up, packed up the surgical stuff and left, gesturing Romanoff and Barton to follow him. O'Malley waited a minute or two, then turned a dial on the anaesthetic machine.
"Is that you waking him up?" Steve asked.
"Yup." She replied. "For better or worse. Bruce should be far enough away by now, and we can't keep him under for ever." Steve nodded. The last time Bucky had been awake, he'd barely recognised him, if he had at all. What if he was the same here? What if he still reacted to Steve as a threat? What if he didn't know him? Steve drew a slow breath and released it. Bucky made a strange raspy wheeze. Steve looked at him, then at O'Malley. "Good sign." She said. "When he's doing it consistently, I'll pull the tube." Steve nodded. He trusted O'Malley. She'd been the single medic he'd had most to do with since he'd woken up here. She was pragmatic, calm, she'd always gone out of her way to put him, and anyone else she treated, at their ease. Bucky twitched his remaining hand. He looked so rough, the bits of him O'Malley hadn't cleaned were filthy, he had lines of stitches all over him and he was thin, really thin. And that arm. Stark had taken some of the external plating off, it looked ragged without it, the shoulder was a bare socket of a gear, severed wires sticking out at odd angles and clipped back down. If he could feel pain in that arm, surely that would hurt him. Bucky shifted and champed his mouth. "Come on, swallow." O'Malley said quietly. Bucky started wheezing again.
"Can he hear?"
"Hard to say, if he can, he probably won't remember." His legs recoiled a bit, then straightened again. The wheezing stopped for a second, O'Malley grabbed the free end of the tube and pulled. Bucky coughed hard and moved his neck as though he was trying to shake his head, but not quite managing it. O'Malley tapped next to his eye. "What's his name?" Steve looked up at her. Nobody had asked that yet. They'd been talking about Bucky all night and nobody had asked his name.
"Barnes. James Buchannan Barnes. He's gone by Bucky for as long as I can remember." O'Malley smiled fleetingly. She laid a hand on Bucky's shoulder. He was still taking big huffs of breath.
"It's OK fella. Lay still. We got you. It's OK." She stroked his hair away from his face. She was remarkably fearless. Maybe she just didn't know what there was to be scared of. Steve padded towards Bucky's head and laid a hand on his other shoulder.
"He's OK." O'Malley said quietly. "So long as the IV stays in, we should be OK. We just need to watch his hydration and blood sugar. He looks like he hasn't eaten in a while, and if he's like you…." Steve nodded. He didn't have to go without food for long before he really felt it.
"How long should this take?"
"Anything from five minutes to two hours. You were really quick, I don't think he's throwing the morphine quite so much. When he does wake up, he'll be really groggy." Bucky shifted again and made a better go at shaking his head, he might have been trying to roll over.
"Lay down Buck. It's OK." Bucky shivered once. O'Malley laid a hand on his forehead.
"He's pretty cold." She pulled a blanket from a shelf behind her. "Figures, but I'm guessing he can take the cold pretty well, he must have been frozen quite a bit." Steve nodded. He'd already reached that conclusion. Otherwise Bucky would look much older.